


Dandelion Wishes

by The_Bookkeeper



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Gen, Introspection, Season/Series 05, Weechesters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-21
Updated: 2013-05-21
Packaged: 2017-12-12 12:00:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/811380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Bookkeeper/pseuds/The_Bookkeeper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Funny, the things you remember in an overheated motel room in the midst of the Apocalypse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dandelion Wishes

**Author's Note:**

> Set in the middle of season five.

When Sammy was two, he pulled the head off a dandelion. Dean had taken him to play in the vacant lot across the street, just trying to keep him occupied and get them both out of the sweltering heat of the motel room. It was a tiny little plot squeezed between two buildings, and any other time of year it probably would have been enormously depressing, but this particular day, in the middle of an unseasonably warm May, it was like a tiny jungle. Even the old beer bottles were covered.

Sammy had been walking and talking for a while, quick enough to give Dean heart attacks and already too solemn and thoughtful for his age. This day, though, he was smiling as he reached for a bright yellow flower.

"Bandy-lion!" he declared happily, grabbing it much too high and pulling before Dean could stop him. His face fell dramatically as the blossom popped off, leaving the stem behind.

"That's not how you pick flowers, dummy," Dean told him scornfully. Sammy frowned at the severed blossom in his hand, and then brightened suddenly.

"Dean fix," he stated, holding it up to him.

"I can't, Sammy. You broke it."

"Put it back on," Sammy insisted, like it was the easiest thing in the world. Dean sighed, but obligingly took the blossom and crouched down. He placed it back on the stem – and it fell off. Just like he knew it would. Sammy's lip quivered, and, despite knowing it would do no good, Dean tried again. Again he was unsuccessful, and Sammy looked about ready to burst into one of his signature screaming fits.

"Hey, hey, Sammy, it's okay," Dean soothed, a little desperately. "Hey, look, there are lots of other dandelions. Come and look at the white ones."

That was years and years and a trip to hell ago, but Dean still remembers it, crystal clear. He remembers distracting Sammy with the fluffy white seeds, Sammy's laughter as they flew away in the wind and his pout when they flew into his mouth. He remembers that he told Sammy about making wishes on them, even though he knew that wishes weren't real. He remembers making some of his own anyway.

If he didn't know it was bullshit then, he sure as hell knows it now. Every single one of those wishes has come crashing down around his ears. Dad just kept being around less and less, Dean never did get those sneakers, and as for Sammy being happy and safe – well.

It's Sam's own damn fault. Dean knows that. Heaven and Hell and the whole sorry mess in between know that. Hell, even  _Sam_  knows that.

(Especially Sam.)

He's sure pulled the head of the dandelion this time, and Dean can't fix it any more than he could back then. There aren't any fluffy white wishes for distraction, either.

(Dean hears Sam praying sometimes, at night, choked and desperate. He can never make out the words, and he never asks.)

There's also no Sammy looking at him with big wet eyes. Sometimes Dean thinks there's no Sammy left at all. Sometimes he thinks there's just Sam; angry, guilty Sam with knuckles white around the handle of Ruby's knife; beaten, battered Sam with shoulders tense beneath Dean's hand.

(At least that's how Dean imagines they would feel. God, when was the last time he touched his brother?)

The motel room is dark and stuffy, unseasonably warm. There's a crack in the ceiling, and a crack in Sam's voice as he talks in his sleep in the next bed. Dean doesn't know, refuses to know what he's saying. Can't risk hearing Sammy in his words. The truth is, he knows Sam isn't entirely to blame. He knows his little brother is still in there, hurt and scared and begging Dean to fix it.

He just doesn't know how.

 


End file.
